that expressive phrase), and said magnanimously, "Milord shall have the four horses without extra pay." He was dying to get his four horses back, you see.

I was quite inclined to refuse them, even on these terms, but smart travelers take good care not to spite themselves, and so we accepted the coach and four.

I need not dwell upon the beautiful dioramic visions, the lunches, the white dust. We stopped for the night at Oneglia, a miserable hole, a blot on the beautiful cornice. Even the guide books give a warning, and say, "Make your bargain beforehand." The landlord of the hotel looked like an old brigand not quite retired from business, and I tried to inform him, by a glance, of my opinion.

We dined late and went to bed to dream of the Mysterious Castle, the Mysteries of Udolpho, and other similar cheerful stories, but no one was assassinated, or kidnapped.

The next morning we descended to a miserable breakfast, after which we ordered the carriage, and thanked the Lord to be off.

I have always had a fancy for curious walking-sticks; I collect them, and, what is worse, I covet them. It is only my strong innate honesty which would keep me from surreptitiously appropriating a rare specimen, and that would be sorely tempted if the opportunity was as rare as the cane.

You

Walking-sticks present a theme of immense variety in the literary field; some day I intend to begin to reap it, by giving a description of some of my own. This done, I will search the record of biography and my social circle, for more material; and if the editor of this magazine is the man I think him, its readers may expect a rich treat. There is my Waterloo stick, made out of a (real) shot-broken standard staff of the Young Guard. want to know how I got it? Wait for my article. Then I have a Constitution walking-stick, made when they did'nt "tear her tattered ensign down;" a bamboo, the gift of a Chinese mandarin -you think I am bamboozling you; a cypress, from that glorious old grove, under which Montezuma walked, cut by my own hand; my orange wood, curiously carved at top into a monk's head, the face in the wood, and the circle of hair left in the bark, whereby hangs a fearful, thunderous tropical tale. There is a ratan with a jambe d'actrice, which I took away for propriety's sake from a fast young

friend. But I must forbear. In brief, were I reduced to want, I should put them up at auction, and introducing my sale by a public lecture on the natural history of walking-sticks, evolving in German fashion the original idea from the depth of my own consciousness, I should retrieve my fortunes, and continue to live a comfortable although a frugal man.

The plot thickens. Mr. F

had a cane-a beautiful cane-and he was so kind, even-tempered and generous, that the tempting spirit prompted me to try to secure it for my collection. I hoped to get it from him without positively begging it; but if not thus, I would tell him of my collection and solicit it as a donation.

His brother, he said, had just returned from Jerusalem, had cut it with his own hand from some holiest spot, and had taken it to a little bazaar where they polished it and put a Scripture text in Hebrew around it. I would write out the motto, if I thought my readers could understand it, and if it would not look pedantic. The English was "They shall prosper who love thee." What a temptation for a cane-fancier ! I had not a Jerusalem stick in my collection. I praised it; I fondled it; but my friend quietly ignored the interest I displayed. "Yes," he said, "I think it a very handsome cane." But when I had the effrontery to ask him for it, he said, "O, it is not mine; it belongs to my brother, and I am only carrying it home for him." After that he always spoke of it as Ben's cane. He really had a brother Ben, I knew.

To return:

We had breakfast at Oneglia. The cane was in Mr. F's hand during breakfast; but, having to return to his room for a moment, he put it in a corner, and when he came back it was gone! Dire was his consternation; but I leave you to imagine my feelings.

it.

Doctor, have you seen my cane ?"

"No."

Rapid inquiries were made. I began to feel as if I had taken

The matter was pressing; the carriage was ready; the baggage on, and we must be off.

It would have amazed you to see the entire transformation in my friend. His sweet temper had departed with his stick. He stormed at the landlord, and threatened instant death to the servants if the cane was not immediately produced. He could

have used the logical argument ad baculum, but that the baculum was wanting. The crowding Italians kept their temper. They brought him all sorts of old sticks, and one old woman ventured to offer the stick of a defunct umbrella. Finding the hurricane of his wrath ineffectual, he at length took his seat in the carriage, rumbling maledictions; but at the last moment he turned to the landlord and said, "I shall remain several days in Nice, and I will give five lire" (large money in that country) "to anyone who will send or bring me the cane."

They all smiled placidly, and we took the road; but we had not gone three hundred yards before we heard a shouting behind us, and a man came running at top speed bearing the Jerusalem cane high in the air. Arrived breathless, he demanded his dollar. Mr. F— fumbled in his pocket but had no change, and as we were in a hurry I said, "I have a five-franc piece; shall I give it to him?" In his joy he said, "Yes." I threw it to the fellow. My friend grasped his baton and we tumbled on. Silence for about three minutes, when out spoke my friend :

"Doctor, you ought not to have given that rascal the money. He secreted the cane and then produced it to get the reward.” "But, said I, "you told me to pay him."

"Yes, but I was flustered and didn't think. I wish I had broken his head with it. I would give a dollar if you hadn't given him that."

He looked so sad and stern that we tried to keep from laughing, but it was no go; we began to smile; the smile became a laugh; the laugh a roar; but he did not join in it, but sat in the midst of the peals dignified and gloomy.

We parted at Nice firm friends, and met again in Paris. He never was without that cane. I believe he slept with it until he got it safely back to Brooklyn-perhaps to Ben.

I declare that, except on the subject of Jerusalem canes, he is as genial, generous and amiable a gentleman as I ever knew. On that subject he becomes a fury, and I have some doubts whether I will ever show him my collection. However, he is an older man than I am, and I am intriguing with Ben's connivance to get him to leave me that cane by his will, and whenever I show it I will tell its story, with no more embellishment than I have used in this truthful recital. HENRI DE COISSY.

EW events have exerted a greater influence in the history of

ea which visited as

tury was drawing to a close. The influence of pestilences and famines in turning the tide of history in new directions has often been observed. The plague that visited Athens, during the administration of Pericles, contributed, in no slight degree, to depose her from her leadership in Greece, and to give the Doric race predominance over the Ionic. Sacred history tells us that at a still earlier date the failure of crops in Egypt transformed the whole social constitution of that country, and that a sudden pestilence or simoon raised the siege of Jerusalem, by destroying the army of Sennacherib. Prof. Seeley, in his study of Roman Imperialism, ascribes the overthrow of the empire by the barbarians to the lack of population, and points to the great pestilence in the reign of Marcus Aurelius as a main cause of the depopulation which exposed that vast congeries of nations to destruction. He traces similar effects of pestilence in the mediæval history of *A short account of the malignant fever which prevailed in Philadelphia in year 1793: with a statement of the proceedings that took place on the subject in different parts of the United States. By M. Carey. Fifth edition. Philadelphia, 1830.

the

Western Europe. "The black death' is a turning point in mediæval English history." Less important and notable results followed the pestilence which afflicted our own city, yet they were not wholly unimportant. Up to the close of the century, Philadelphia was the metropolis, as well as the capital, of the nation— a fact still traceable in the plans of western cities that were laid out before that date. Since then she has yielded the place of preeminence to New York, partly, indeed, because the invention of steamships made the position of our sister city a very special advantage, partly because our city fathers adopted a very narrow and short-sighted policy toward various branches of business (auctioneering, &c.), whose possession they regarded as assured to the city; but partly, also, because the material prosperity of our city received a very grave shock through the ravages of "the malignant fever." The movement to transfer the seat of the National Government to the banks of the Potomac was promoted, no doubt, by the same cause. But the effects of the pestilence were not unmixed calamity. That the Quaker City was in a thoroughly filthy condition in 1793, was assigned by the popular mind as a reason for the spread of the epidemic, and, therefore, traditions. of municipal cleanliness prevailed here for the two generations that followed. Philadelphia came to be pointed out in all quarters as "a city of clean streets and clean records;" but the third generation seems to have utterly forgotten the lesson. The present writer took a look at some of the dirtiest parts of New York and Brooklyn last summer, but could find nothing to compare with the filth, that it needed no searching to find, in the southern part of our city.

The maglignant fever of 1793 found a faithful matter-of-fact historian in Matthew Carey, who might have put on his title-page the motto, Quorum pars magna fui. The worthy Catholic book-seller and book-maker published his pamphlet Account in November, 1793, and his preface bears date within a week after the epidemic “had run its course" as some would express it, or as others would say "had been brought under control." A third edition was called for before the month was out, and a fourth in the January following. The fifth appears in his Miscellaneous Essays, collected in 1830. He represents the years that preceded the pestilence as a time of marked prosperity, in strong contrast to the period that imme